The present invention relates to data manipulation and more particularly to a versatile memory controller chip that, in combination with a memory buffer, enables a variety of data transformations to be performed.
Numerous computer applications require the data output of a first device to be suitably transformed for input to a second device. In the past, specialized interfaces have been designed as needed to accomplish such transformation. Such design is often time-consuming and expensive and yields as its end product a piece of hardware of only limited usefulness outside of the immediate environment for which it was designed. Such a "hard-wired" approach therefore not only entails prohibitive overhead but is of only limited effectiveness. In view of these problems and limitations, a need exists for a general-purpose intelligent interface module adaptable to different environments and capable of performing a wide variety of data transformations.